Agenda

Our HOA provides a one page agenda. Board members receive many reports that are never shared online or at meeting. Owners cannot contribute to meeting discussions without these reports. Manager says the attachments are too numerous to lost or copy fit meetings.

Melissa,

Many States have statutes that specify a copy of all materials available to directors at a meeting must also be available to members in attendance at the board meeting. Our Association provides a copy to anyone attending. Others have one copy that can be passed around.

Nabil,

You need to check the applicable State statutes to see if this applies to your association or not.

Additionally, you should not expect to participate in any discussion that does not directly relate to your property. Typically, members may attend to observe only. Our board will invite anyone attending to join the discussion. Other boards I know of that have a large number of members attending do not invite them to join in.

I agree with what's been said so far. When I was on the board, I remember that even without the delinquency information, our financial reports were close to 200 pages. That's a lot to photocopy for a meeting when you don't even know how many people will attend - if no one does, that's a waste of paper and printing expenses.

Keep attending the meetings, but you may want to jot down questions you can ask during the resident forum or send to the board afterwards for follow up. Remember, you won't get information on sensitive legal matters like delinquencies due to privacy, but a good place to start regarding documentation is by reviewing the monthly income/expense statements that shouldn't be very long. If your association has a website, the board could also create a members only section where some of those documents can be posted.

If you don't have a resident forum, you can suggest this be added to the agenda. It's a brief period where residents can make general comments or suggestions regarding association business. To keep it from being a free for all, ours were about 15-20 minutes tops, depending on how many people were there and each speaker would be limited to 2-3 minutes so they'd get to the point and everyone would have a chance to speak.

When I was on my board in Ca. we had a large Screen Tv that we sat in front of and we displayed the items we were discussing. Printing documents would be useless since as someone already said it can take hours to go through a board packet. The Executive stuff would have to be removed and it would just be crazy to pay the PM to print copies for HOs who may or may not show up. Most management companies charge $.20 per page for printing think about how fast that can add up and money wasted. Also shredding the documents once they are not needed would be another cost to the association. Also bid materials are confidential and should not be shared. The board has the fiduciary right and duty to protect this information.

Boards are elected to act on the owners behave. If you don't trust them vote them out or run for office.